discussion papers in economics and businessmoraga (2012) focuses on the immigrants, who stay in the...

Discussion Papers In Economics And Business

Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP)

Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, JAPAN

Benefit and Cost of Visa relaxation

-Empirical Analysis on the Impact of Visa waiver-

Tsuyoshi Goto and Nobuo Akai

Discussion Paper 17-10

April 2017

Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP)

Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, JAPAN


-Empirical Analysis on the Impact of Visa waiver-

Tsuyoshi Goto and Nobuo Akai

Discussion Paper 17-10


-Empirical Analysis on the Impact of Visa waiver-∗

Tsuyoshi GOTO†, Nobuo AKAI‡

April 24, 2017

Abstract

In spite of a heated debate over immigration policies in the world, the effects of visa, which is

one of the representative tool for immigration control, are uncertain for some aspects. This paper

analyzes whether visa relaxation has impacts on both legal foreign visitors and illegally overstayed

foreigners focusing on Japanese visa waiver program. The empirical analyses show that visa waiver

will increase both legal travelers and illegally overstayed foreigners while it may have a bigger effect

on legal visitors than overstayed foreigners.

Keywords: Visa; Immigration policy; Policy evaluation

JEL Classification: F22; F68; H56; K37; L51

∗ We are very thankful to the staff of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Japanese Tourism Agency, Hong Kong

Tourism Board, Sydney and Hong Kong office of Japan National Tourism Organization, and Hong Kong office of

Japan Airlines. We appreciate Dr.Victoria Peel and Dr.Onji Kazuki for valuable comments and suggestions. We

also thank Mr.Mikami Ryo, Mr.Yoshizawa Fumiaki, Mr.Kinoshita Yusuke and the participants at Akai Seminar in

Osaka university for precious comments and appreciations, and the Cross Boundary Innovation Program of Osaka

University for financial support. The authors are responsible for all remaining errors.† Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University. Email: [email protected]‡ Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. Email: [email protected]

1 Introduction

In many countries, immigration control become a controversial issue of public policy. British govern-

ment exit the EU because they thought that they cannot afford to receive more immigrant. United states

also choose Donald Trump, who insists that illegal immigrants are a threat, as their president. They try

to introduce several ways to control the flow of foreign visitors while the effects of these measures are

uncertain.

Among them, visa restriction is a typical method to control the flow of foreign visitors. In the in-

ternational law, all countries have a right to introduce the visa restriction and many countries indeed

make a visa requirement against unwelcome visitors. Neumayer (2006), which is the first empirical re-

search to investigate the visa policy, mentions that visa has the pre-selection role like a virtual border

for foreign visitors because ‘many countries require airlines not to let anyone enter the aircraft who is

not in possession of a valid visa’ (Neumayer, 2006, p75). As this says the visa restriction may be one

of the most powerful ways to control visitors’ flow. On the other hand, some countries introduce visa

waiver program or the relaxation of visa restriction for certain countries from which they consider they

have few unwelcome visitors. Some countries also often introduce the relaxation of visa as a diplomatic

tool. If the requirement of visa is abolished, we can assume that foreigners can enter into the country

easily. However, it has been unsure whether this statement can be applied to both legal visitors and

illegal visitors, and how big the impact of visa waiver is. Then, this paper tries to investigate the effects

on both legal visitors and illegal visitors, and examine whether the visa policy, both visa relaxation and

visa regulation, works as one of the immigration policies.

The effects of visa policies on the legal tourists have been researched. Neumayer (2010a) and Lawson

and Roychoudhury (2016) investigate a impact of visa restriction for foreign visitors using the data of

about 30,000 country pairs. Both of them suggests that the visa restriction reduce the bilateral flow of

legal visitors and the cost of the restriction is high considering the economic impact from tourists. Balli

et al.(2013) and Beenstock et al.(2015) investigate the effect of visa waiver program in Turkey and Israel

respectively. They use inbound tourists’ data of each country and suggest that the termination of visa

requirement increase the number of inbound visitors. Xu (2013) compares the similar two countries, one

of which is applied the visa waiver program of the U.S. and the other of which is not so. This paper

suggests the visa waiver program increases inbound visitors to the U.S.. These papers focus on the effect

on legitimated visitors, most of whom are tourists. The estimations of these tourism demand with or

without a visa factor were researched a lot (Song and Li, 2008 or Witt and Witt, 1995, for example),

and this kind of papers employs the income of visitors, the travel cost, exchange rates, and some events

like a war or a tourism campaign as determinant factors of the tourism demand. Therefore, we use these

factors as well as the dummy of the visa waiver for the analysis of the foreign visitors.

There are fewer papers about other effects of visa than research about tourism demand. Bertoli and

Moraga (2012) focuses on the immigrants, who stay in the destination country relatively longer than

tourists, and shows that visa restrictions of each country may reduce the number of immigrants. Neu-

mayer (2010b) shows that visa restrictions may reduce the foreign direct investment and the amount of

1

trade between the countries. However, as far as we know, there is no research about visa and illegal

migration although there are some papers about illegal migrant and policy like Pinotti (2017). Then, we

also carry out a regression analysis about visa and illegal migrants.

Considering these two aspects, legal and illegal visitors, we investigate the effects of the visa waiver

using Japanese data. Japanese government employ the visa policy as a diplomatic tool as well as the

controlling tool of traveler from 2000s*1. Therefore, we might assume that Japanese visa policy is rel-

atively exogenous. However, as many countries including Japan do so, the visa restriction is usually

implemented in order to control the flow of foreigners or to reduce the number of unwelcome visitors.

Thus, there might be reverse causalities between the visa policy and the number of foreign visitors or

illegal migrant. In this paper, we perform Granger causality check and confirm that the effect of such

reverse causalities is relatively low if there are some.

This paper consists of five sections. The following section will explain the Japanese visa system and the

situations about foreign visitors. The empirical analysis about foreign visitors and illegal migrants are in-

vestigated in section 3 and section 4 respectively. Section 5 discusses the results and policy implications,

and presents concluding remarks.

2 Visa system and foreign visitors in Japan

Japanese visa system is not simple. Foreigners who want to enter Japan have to issue a valid visa

at a consulate of each country before they leave to Japan in principle. Each visitor has to issue a visa

according to his or her status of residence. The visa classification, which is showed as table 1, is linked

to the classification of status of residence though both classification is not completely the same. Before

issuing visa, in principle, visitors, except temporary visitor who issues short-term stay visa, have to

get a certificate of eligibility from representatives in Japan and the representatives have to be issued

the certificate from a regional immigration bureau in Japan. These procedures are time-consuming and

visitors have to prepare visa issuance fee, which is usually 3,000 yen, many documents like a balance

statement for a bank account, and representatives in Japan.

However, travelers with short-term stay visa often are not required such complicated processes because

they need not get a certificate of eligibility and there are some visa relaxation measures depending on

countries. The most popular measure of visa relaxation is visa waiver. If the country of a temporary

visitor is selected as a visa-waived country, he or she can enter Japan without visa. The number of

visa-waived countries is 67 in January 2017 (table 2). As table 2 shows, visa-waived countries are mainly

western countries while some Latin American and Asian countries are also selected. At a glance, these

visa-waived countries are relatively high income and have a strong tie with Japan. However, there are

some low or middle income countries which do not necessary have a strong connection with Japan like

Suriname or Lesotho. The permitted period of stay for visa waiver is basically 90 days except Thailand

and Brunei, whose period of stay is 15 days. The list of visa-waived countries can be varied and some

*1 For example, three of five Japanese visa relaxations in 2016 is formally determined in the summit meeting between

the Japanese prime minister and a foreign leader.

2

Asian and European countries were added to the list while only Colombia was excluded from it in 2004

as table 3 shows.

Table 1: The visa classification

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan

Table 2: The list of visa-waived country


Table 3: The changes of the visa-waived country list


Another measure of visa relaxation is the issuance of multiple visa. While visitors usually have to

issue visa every time they enter Japan, they do not have to issue visa if they have valid multiple visas.

Thus, it makes easier to enter Japan than the ordinal way. However, travelers still have to issue a visa

in this measure and the valid term of multiple visa varies in each country or each individual. Other

measures of visa relaxation include discount of visa issuance fee or changes of criteria for issuing visa

while these are assumed to have less effective than visa waiver because travelers still have to issue visa. In

addition, the information of these minor measure of visa relaxation is not published completely because

some foreigners may abuse visa system*2. Thus, we focus on the effect of visa waiver and exclude the

other minor visa relaxations as explanatory variables.

*2 For instance, if criteria for issuing visa like a balance of bank account are published, people can borrow much money

from others and mimic as if they are rich. Although we tried to get the information of visa relaxation including minor

measures from the ministry of foreign affairs of Japan, it denied to publish for such a reason.

3

The number of foreign visitors are increasing as figure 1 shows. Most of them enter Japan in their

capacity as short term stayers. Since visa waiver can be applied to short term stayers whose countries are

selected as visa-waived countries, visa waiver may have a great impact on these short term stayers. In

addition to visa waiver, several factors can be considered as factors to increase the number of travelers.

Economic development of Asian countries are one of them. Japan is nearby Korea, Taiwan, China, and

Southeastern Asian countries, where rapid economic growth have been experienced from 1990s. Another

factor is the increasing number of airlines represented by low-cost carrier (LCC). This is mainly caused

by deregulation of aviation policies of Japan and other countries*3 and can be assumed as a exogenous

factor. Tourism policy may also affect the tourism demand. Japanese government holds a inbound

tourism promotion called ‘Visit Japan Campaign’ (VJC) from 2003. This promotion is mainly held

in selected countries and some research suggest VJC succeeds in inviting a large amount of tourists

to Japan*4. In addition, as ordinal estimations of tourism demand suggests, weak Japanese yen may

increase the number of tourists.

Figure 1: The number of foreign visitors

Source: Ministry of Justice of Japan*5

*3 Japanese government abolished a demand-supply adjustment regulation and approval of tariffs and charges in 2000.

China did a similar deregulation in 2004. Indeed, eleven of twenty four aviation companies which have a scheduled

flight in Japan started their frights after deregulation. Considering five companies which were founded after 1995

expecting the deregulation, increasing number of fright can be attributed to deregulation of aviation policies.*4 Nakazawa (2009) and JNTO (2015) are examples.*5 Highly skilled professional visa started from 2015 and is omitted since the number of people with it was 2,300, which

is a very small number. Medical stay visa holders, who are very few, are included in short term stayers.

4

Figure 2: The stock number of illegally overstayed foreigners at January 1st

Source: Ministry of Justice of Japan

On the contrary to the number of foreign visitors, the number of overstayed foreign nationals (those

who illegally stay beyond their permitted period of stay) has largely reduced as figure 2 shows. In Japan,

the Ministry of Justice record the types of visa, permitted period of stay, and nationalities of each visitor.

From this record, they calculate and publish the number of overstayed foreigner in each year. Since these

numbers are the stock of overstayed foreigners at January 1st of each year, we have to consider that

several factors affects the flow of overstayed foreigners, which is used in our regression. The figure 2

also shows that a large part of overstayed people comes as temporary visitors and this implies that visa

waiver may affect the number of these illegal travelers. Since the permitted term of stay for temporary

visitors is usually 90 days or less and visitors overstayed even more a day than the permitted term are

counted as illegally overstayed visitors, the effect of visa waiver would be shown in the flow of the same

year. Other possible factors for increasing the number of overstayed visitors are a economic factor, a cost

factor, and a policy factor. Large numbers of overstayed visitors come from Asian countries, which have

high economic growths. Thus, we can guess that people there who might have come to Japan, which

was much richer than their own country in the past, do not come since they become rich. On the other

hand, a cost factor may work as a factor which increase illegals. Travel cost has been getting cheaper

because the number of airlines has increased and people may come to Japan much easier than before.

A policy factor is also important. Japanese government implemented a campaign to halve overstayed

visitors from 2004 to 2009 and is still trying to reduce overstayed people using the know-how employed

5

in this campaign*6.

Considering these backgrounds and factors, the following parts investigate the effect of visa waiver on

both foreign visitor and overstayed people.

3 Empirical analysis about visa waiver and foreign visitors

In order to confirm whether visa waiver has an impact on the number of foreign visitors, we conduct

static and dynamic panel data analysis using the data of 172 countries*7 from 2000 to 2014. Descriptive

statistics and data sources are shown in table 4.

Table 4: Descriptive statistics and data sourcesVariables Mean Std Dev Min Max Number Source

Foreign visitor 47411.68 232904.2 0 3016112 2556 Statistical Survey on Legal Migrants

Direct aviation services 870.08 3987.71 0 42376 2580 OAG Aviation dataGDP per capita 15919.19 18723.6 336.80 159825.72 2580 Penn World Table

Real exchange rate 0.4939 0.3652 0.0168 2.6641 2580 Penn World TableVisa Waiver dummy 0.3312 0.4698 0 1 2580 Treaty Database

VJC dummy 0.0565 0.2311 0 1 2580 White Paper of TourismHuman Development Index 0.6662 0.1671 0.255 0.948 2413 United Nation Development Proglam

Human Capital Index 2.4492 0.6869 1.0694 3.7342 2145 Penn World Table

Our main hypothesis is:

Yit = α0 + α1Iit + α2Pit + α3βit. (1)

where Yit is visitors from i to Japan at t, Iit denotes an income in i at t, Pit captures cost factors to

come from i to Japan at t, βit denotes a factor about preference to come to Japan from i at t, and

α0 is constant. We use the number of foreign visitor as an independent variable and several dependent

variables corresponding to the hypothesis above.

GDP per capita is expected to capture the income level, which reflects the economic growth in each

country, and its coefficient is assumed to be positive since richer people can afford to travel abroad. We

employ three variables that represent cost factors and are the number of direct aviation service, real

exchange rate, and visa waiver dummy. The number of direct aviation service between Japan and each

country is used to explain the cost to travel and its coefficient will be positive. Although some research

use the distance to capture this effect, we do not employ it since it is time-invariant and is omitted in

the fixed-effect model we used. Real exchange rate is yen basis and would capture a cost factor, where

inbound visitor will increase if the rate is high, which is equivalent to weak yen*8. Therefore, expected

coefficient of real exchange rate is positive. The main explanatory variable is visa waiver dummy, which

takes one if visa is waived in the whole year and takes the value between zero and one which shows how

many days visa waiver is implemented*9 if visa waiver is introduced in the middle of the year. It takes zero

otherwise. Since visa waiver would allow foreigners to travel easily, the coefficient will be positive. The

dummy variable of VJC represents a preference factor since people would like to travel if advertisements

by VJC are successful. It takes one if VJC is implemented there and takes zero otherwise. Then, its

coefficient should be positive. In addition to them, we employ GDP, population, nominal exchange rate,

*6 Pre-clearance of visitors in departed airport and Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), which check the

information of passengers of each airlines, were introduced in 2005 and both are still employed.*7 The list of countries is shown in appendix.*8 The composition of real exchange rate is shown in the appendix.*9 It is equal to (Days when visa waiver implemented in a year)/365.

6

the amount of trade and year dummies while we conduct analyses. Except the results about year dummy,

these results are sited in appendix.

Table 5: Empirical results of static panel analysis(1)Fix-effect Panel (2) Fix-effect Panel

VARIABLES visitor visitor

Visa waiver 129,308** 128,493**(51,501) (51,371)

Direct aviation services 50.02*** 49.76***(DAS) (7.378) (7.285)GDP per capita -0.195 -0.327(GCP) (0.303) (0.308)Real exchange rate 21,912** 14,767(RXR) (11,038) (12,744)Visit Japan Campaign 79,721*** 81,151***(VJC) (29,696) (29,624)Constant -52,023** -45,578**

(21,004) (18,774)Year dummy No YesSargan-Hansen χ2(4)=45.65*** χ2(17)=34.67***Observations 2,556 2,556R-squared 0.580 0.585Number of code 172 172

Robust standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

The empirical results of static panel analyses are shown at table 5. The results show that the coefficient

of visa waiver is significantly positive and about 129,000, while the significant level are different among

the models. These coefficients are quite small compared to the former research except Beenstock et

al.(2015). This may be because the former research use panel data with short time series and fixed

characteristics might not be captured there, while Beenstock et al.(2015) and we use data with relatively

long time series. The signs of other coefficients are shown as we expected except GDP per capita. This

might be because Japan has many visitors from low or middle income countries in Asia like China and

Southeastern Asian countries.

In addition to the static panel analysis, we conduct dynamic panel analysis since the trend of inbound

demand seems to be dynamic and we could employ this method thanks to large data size*10. In this

analysis, the hypothesis is modified as

Yit = γYit−1 + α0 + α1Iit + α2Pit + α3βit. (2)

We use the first order GMM estimation, which tells consistent estimators without assumptions about

initial condition. In order to obtain the result, we use two-step weight matrix as a weight of GMM. The

contraction of each variable we employed is the same as a static panel’s one.

*10 Unfortunately, dynamic panel analysis is not feasible in the analysis for illegal overstayed foreigners because the

sample size is limited there. We now try to get broader data set.

7

Table 6: Empirical results of dynamic panel analysis(1) First Difference GMM Panel (2) First Difference GMM Panel

VARIABLES visitor visitor

L.visitor 0.517*** 0.529***(0.0151) (0.00948)

Visa waiver 95,417*** 82,756***(18,265) (27,850)

Direct aviation services 36.39*** 36.67***(DAS) (0.473) (1.718)Real exchange rate 45,450*** 34,466***(RXR) (5,230) (4,098)GDP per capita 0.826 0.0808(GCP) (0.510) (2.083)Visit Japan Campaign 18,883** 21,063(VJC) (7,847) (20,459)Constant -53,764*** -42,150*

(9,550) (22,922)Pre-determined variable - VISAObservations 2,212 2,212Number of code 172 172


The empirical results of dynamic panel analyses are shown at table 6. Column (1) shows the result

where VISA is a exogenous variable, while the result of column (2) assumed VISA is a pre-determined

variable. The results show that the coefficient of visa waiver is significantly positive while its magnitude is

somewhat lower than statistic panel’s one. The signs of most coefficients are the same as statistic panel’s

one though some of their significancy and magnitudes are changed. From the result, the significancy and

magnitude of real exchange rate become strong. On the other hand, the dummy of visit Japan campaign

become weaker. However, GDP per capita is still insignificant here. This may show GDP per capita

irrelevant to inbound demand of Japan.

We also check the Granger causality from the number of visitors to visa waiver as table 7 shows.

Though only three-years-lagged variables show that the number of visitors may increase the probability

of visa waiver, the causality does not seem to exist. While we also conduct regressions including four-

years-lagged variables, these results do not show causality even in three-years-lagged variables.

Table 7: Granger causality check(1) Probit (2) OLS

VARIABLES Visa waiver Visa waiver

visitor 1 -3.42e-07 4.76e-09(9.19e-07) (2.31e-07)

visitor 2 -5.91e-07 2.07e-08(1.24e-06) (2.83e-07)

visitor 3 2.25e-06* 3.41e-07(1.19e-06) (2.61e-07)

Constant -0.455*** 0.325***(0.0296) (0.0106)

Observations 2,040 2,040R-squared 0.025

Standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

While we should conduct regressions including instrumental variables (IV) considering the endogeneity,

it is difficult to find concrete example of IV for visa. Then, we conduct panel analyses with checking the

Granger causality as is often the case. If any, the endogeneity of visa would work for overestimation of

coefficient of visa waiver, although our results are very small comparing to the former research. Anyway,

as a result, we show that the effect of visa waiver exist but is smaller than it is suggested in the previous

8

papers.

4 Empirical analysis about visa waiver and the illegally overstayed foreigners

As well as legal foreign visitors, visa waiver may increase illegal immigrants since it allows them to

enter Japan easily. In this section, we investigate whether visa waiver increase overstayed foreigners,

who we choose as an representative of various types of illegal immigrants, employing the data of 13

countries*11 from 2000 to 2014. Since the published data of overstayed foreigners are limited only worst

ten countries in a year, the number of countries in the data is limited compared to the analysis of legal

visitors. Descriptive statistics and data sources are shown in table 8.

Table 8: Descriptive statistics and data sourcesVariables Mean Std Dev Min Max Number Source

Overstayed foreigners (flow) -851.46 1576.48 -7560 3846 180 Immigration Control Report

Direct aviation services 7213.19 10566.61 0 42376 195 OAG Aviation dataGDP per capita 15688.71 16387.57 1174.42 72743.53 195 Penn World Table

Real exchange rate 0.3678 0.2056 0.0449 1.1760 195 Penn World TableVisa Waiver dummy 0.1936 0.3906 0 1 195 Treaty Database

Note that we use the flow data which is equal to the stock in the current year minus the stock in the

previous year. This is because descriptive statistics of overstayed foreigners shows negative value.

Our main hypothesis is:

Yit = α0 + α1Iit + α2Pit. (3)

where Yit is visitors from i to Japan at t, Iit denotes an income in i at t, Pit captures cost factors to

come from i to Japan at t, and α0 is constant. Thought there might be preference factors like easiness

for overstayed visitor to live in Japan, such factors are not available and we do not use Visit Japan

Campaign dummy since it is a tourism promotion policy, not an overstay promotion. We use the flow of

overstayed foreigners as an independent variable and several dependent variables corresponding to the

hypothesis above as we do in the previous section. GDP per capita represents income of each countries

and its coefficient is expected to take negative value since visitors from poorer countries would overstay

more. The number of direct aviation service, real exchange rate, and visa waiver dummy will capture

the cost to travel. Since increase of these values means the reduction of travel cost, these coefficients

are presumed to be positive while the coefficient of real exchange rate can be negative because sending

money in stronger yen will be reasonable for overstayed foreigners. The composition of each variable

are the same as we explained in the previous section. In addition to them, we employ GDP, population,

nominal exchange rate, the amount of trade and year dummies while we conduct analyses. In particular,

year dummies will capture the effect of the governmental campaign to halve overstayed visitors from

2004. Except the results about year dummy, these results are sited in appendix.

The empirical results are shown at table 9. Although most of explanatory variables are not significant,

the three of four coefficients about the visa waiver dummy are significantly positive and take values of

around 900. These results for visa waiver are consistent with our main hypothesis, which is that visa

waiver will increase the number of overstayed foreigners. Comparing the effect on legal visitor, these

*11 The list of countries is shown in appendix.

9

coefficients are relatively small. Most of the other explanatory variables are insignificant and the signs

of them vary from model to model except real exchange rate. This is may be because low real exchange

rate in yen basis means strong yen, where overstayed foreigners can send more money in terms of their

currency.

Table 9: Empirical results(1)Fixed-effect Panel (2)Fixed-effect Panel

VARIABLES Overstayed foreigner Overstayed foreigner

Visa waiver 892.9* 968.0**(455.9) (337.1)

Direct aviation services -0.0392 -0.0464(DAS) (0.0593) (0.0438)GDP per capita 0.0163 0.00602(GPC) (0.0221) (0.0141)Real exchange rate -627.0 -530.5(RXR) (1,214) (1,508)Constant -761.2** -1,026**

(309.8) (418.1)Year dummy No YesSargan-Hansen χ2(4)=24.65*** -Observations 180 180R-squared 0.029 0.332Number of code 13 13


We also check the Granger causality from the flow of overstayed foreigner to visa waiver as table 10

shows. From this results, the causality does not seem to exist.

Table 10: Granger causality check(1) Probit (2) OLS

VARIABLES Visa waiver Visa waiver

Overstayed foreigner (OF) 1 -2.84e-05 -9.62e-06(0.000101) (3.12e-05)

OF 2 -8.19e-06 -1.83e-06(0.000169) (5.26e-05)

OF 3 3.72e-05 1.23e-05(9.20e-05) (2.86e-05)

Constant -0.728*** 0.210***(0.153) (0.0481)

Observations 144 144R-squared 0.009

Standard errors in parentheses*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

As well as the previous part, the results in this section may be affected by endogeneity. In particular,

the endogeneity of visa waiver policy might exist, while we check that there are not the Granger causality

from the number of overstayed visitor to visa waiver.

In addition, the analyses in this section are conducted with limited sample comparing to the analyses

in section 3. Thus, an analysis with a more sophisticated method or a large sample data is needed. How-

ever, we firstly show that visa waiver would increase overstayed foreigners and its impact on overstayed

foreigners might be small comparing with its impact on legal visitors.

5 Concluding remarks

Considering the results of section 3 and 4, can we say that we should abolish visa restriction or we

should make more strict visa system? Perhaps we cannot say either clearly because the results show that

10

visa waiver will increase both legal visitors and illegally overstayed foreigners. Neumayer (2010a, 2010b)

and Lawson and Roychoudhury (2016) insist that the each government in the world should abolish visa

restriction since it will increase tourists, investments, or trades among the countries referring to their

empirical results that show visa restriction impede the good interactions among the countries. However,

since visa system itself was enacted to protect a country from unwelcome people like potential offenders

and terrorists, the side effect of visa waiver should be considered. From our results, there may be an

unfavorable side effect in visa waiver. Therefore, the governments should use visa policies taking it into

account.

In addition, our results also show that the effect of visa waiver is smaller in overstayed foreigners

than in legal visitors. From this, it can be suggested that the net economic effect of visa waiver will be

positive. However, potential social welfare loss by criminals of illegal foreigner is unaccountable since

the losses by a murder or a terror cannot be converted into economic measures easily. Ignorance of

overstay caused by visa waiver may also lead to ignorance of situations of overstayed people since they

are sometimes exploited because of their illegitimacy. Some overstayed people have no choice but to

work under the minimum wage because they cannot work as legitimated workers do. Indeed, some

people have been arrested for exploiting overstayed foreigners in Japan*12. While these ethical aspects

of overstayed foreigner are out of the range of this paper, policymakers should consider these aspects as

well as economic effects of visa.

The indicator, illegally overstayed foreigners, which we employed perhaps should be reconsidered since

they include the number of those who just overstayed even a day but not commit other crimes. However,

the arrest rate of overstayed people is obviously and significantly higher than legal visitors*13. In addition,

even if they do not commit a crime, overstay itself is illegal in Japan. Thus, this indicator is reasonable

to employ in this context.

As we discuss, visa relaxation is not a simple issue. Thus, other policies like tourism promotions or

deregulation of aviation market would be suitable to implement if the government want to increase the

number of inbound travelers eliminating potential illegal foreigners, since these policies are suggested to

be valid in this paper. Anyway, this paper can offer a different point of view about visa policy and we

hope that visa policy will be considered from both legal and illegal visitors.

Finally, we have to remark that our analyses are dependent on some assumption and limited data.

In particular, endogeneity between visa waiver and the dependent variables should be examined with

more sophisticated methods, though we checked the Granger causalities. In addition, other aspects or

other policies about immigration control can be examined as extensions of this research. For example,

the different type of visa relaxation like issuance of multiple visa can be researched if there is refined

data. In order to obtain a further insight into immigration control policy, more sophisticated research

are needed.

*12 The Mainichi news paper on November 21st in 2012, for example, reported that Indonesian man was arrested because

he introduced overstayed foreigners to some companies and deducted the income of these foreigners unjustly.*13 The arrest rate of the criminal law by overstayed foreigners is 0.4% while 0.2 % by all people in Japan (including

legal visitors) and 0.02% by legal foreign visitors (National Police Agency, 2016a 2016b).

11

Appendix

1 The list of countries employed in the analyses

Table A1: The list of countries employed in the analysis of legal visitors

Table A2: The list of countries employed in the analysis of overstayed foreigners

2 Composition of real exchange rate

Exchange rates between currencies and currency units vary from country to country. For example, one

unit of Korean won is equal to about 0.1 Japanese yen while U.S. dollar is equal to about 110 yen. In

reality, the perception for these units should be changed and converted into a united criterion. Thus, we

calculate a nominal exchange rate of each currencies in yen basis first and set its rate in 2000 as a unity

using the data from Penn World Table. Denote this modified nominal exchange rate as mnxrit. Penn

World Table shows the price level of household consumption, plc, in each country at each year using

the level of one in U.S. 2011 as a unity. Then, when we denote Japanese plcit as Jplcit, modified real

exchange rate, mrxrit that we employed in the analyses is

mrxrit =mnxrit × plcit

Jplcit.

Note that this real exchange rate is yen basis and the lower it is, the stronger yen is realized.

3 Results when other variables are employed

We conduct several analyses with other variables than we employed in the table 5, 6, 9. Table A3

and A4 shows the results of static panel analyses about legal visitors and illegally overstayed foreigners

respectively.

12

Table A3: Empirical results of analyses about legal visitors with other variables(1)Fixed-effect (2)Fixed-effect (3)Fixed-effect (4)Fixed-effect (5)Fixed-effect (6)Fixed-effect

VARIABLES visitor visitor visitor visitor visitor visitor

Direct aviation services 50.06*** 49.72*** 41.75*** 41.55*** 44.55*** 44.26***(DAS) (7.363) (7.278) (14.88) (14.79) (13.41) (13.42)GDP per capita -0.0699 -0.354 -0.351 -0.470(GPC) (0.314) (0.305) (0.352) (0.361)Nominal exchange rate 13,752* 15,482(NXR) (7,952) (11,123)Visa waiver 128,211** 127,352** 145,792** 145,215** 138,129** 137,413**

(51,030) (50,888) (62,190) (62,207) (56,839) (56,870)VJC 83,342*** 81,399*** 56,129* 59,604* 70,103** 71,483**

(29,610) (29,464) (31,359) (31,194) (31,828) (32,028)GDP 0.0566 0.0571

(0.0350) (0.0349)Population -1,189* -1,221*(POP) (657.8) (641.6)Real exchange rate 17,416* 9,102 17,304* 11,668RXR (9,449) (8,825) (9,296) (10,205)Trade 1.21e-05 1.22e-05

(1.25e-05) (1.27e-05)Constant -56,443** -55,462** -29,468 -22,540 -53,713** -48,100**

(24,143) (22,436) (29,178) (27,120) (21,878) (19,922)Year dummy No Yes No Yes No Yes

Observations 2,556 2,556 2,556R-squared 0.578 0.585 0.603 0.608 0.585 0.590Number of code 172 172 172 172 172 172


Table A4: Empirical results of analyses about overstayed foreigners with other variables(1)Fixed-effect (2) Fixed-effect (3) Fixed-effect (4) Fixed-effect (5) Fixed-effect (6) Fixed-effect

VARIABLES Overstayed Foreigners OF OF OF OF OF

Visa waiver 881.0* 979.7** 1,200 754.7 829.6 1,068**(457.4) (336.7) (751.6) (503.2) (654.3) (475.9)

GDP per capita 0.0124 -0.00463 0.0159 0.00980(GPC) (0.0225) (0.0238) (0.0226) (0.0122)Direct aviation services -0.0427 -0.0496 -0.0826 -0.0801 -0.0192 -0.0744(DAS) (0.0542) (0.0464) (0.118) (0.0746) (0.134) (0.109)Nominal exchange rate -132.1 841.7(NXR) (713.5) (1,618)GDP 0.000688* 0.000772***

(0.000329) (0.000214)Population -55.36*** -83.35***(POP) (17.08) (24.08)Real exchange rate -877.5 -128.4 -394.6 -907.6(RXR) (656.3) (1,238) (515.9) (1,151)Trade -4.22e-08 6.15e-08

(1.69e-07) (1.35e-07)Constant -783.2 -1,891 8,674** 12,560*** -795.8** -1,004**

(632.9) (1,303) (3,072) (3,678) (317.2) (382.3)

Year dummy No Yes No Yes No YesObservations 180 180 180 180 180 180R-squared 0.027 0.334 0.063 0.364 0.031 0.335Number of code 13 13 13 13 13 13


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